The Moment Before

by Jason Makansi

  “We’re evaluating dozens of sites all the time. It can be confusing.”

  “Who let the cat out of the bag? Do you even know?”

  “I can assure you, no one from our team.”

  “Oh, really? You mean to tell me, your boat is the only leak-free ship in the whole federal fleet?”

  The idea that Holly and her friend Penndel had somehow figured it all out and spread the news through Saluki had burrowed its way into John’s brain, but overnight it occurred to him that he was an idiot. How could he have ever thought Holly would be the type of person to betray a confidence? Disgusted with himself, he spat at Sugarman. “And why the fuck are you so calm? You told me over and over to keep this under wraps. ‘We never had this conversation,’ you said. ‘This is confidential blah, blah, blah’.”

  “Are you sure you told no one? Your wife? Your partner on the medical complex project?”

  John caught his breath. “Look here, you son of a bitch, you keep my wife out of this. You know what I think? I think your team leaks like a goddamned sieve. I think someone on your team’s the source of this leak and you better fix it.”

  “Let’s think about damage control, John. The news may be out about me and my team, but Mr. Eisenstat’s name must not be mixed up in this. Do you understand?”

  “No, I do not understand. I don’t know what kind of shit organization you two work for, but I was not the one who leaked. You want to keep Stuart’s name out of it, I suggest you tell your team that. Not me. Now, are you interested in the property or not?”

  “We are interested, but-”

  “No buts. I’ve got to do some serious damage control here, and I need to know what the hell’s going on. Where are you in the selection process and how many sites are you evaluating?”

  “Actually, we’ve got a fantastic selection. I mean, nothing like a disaster economy to encourage the cooperation of the states and municipal localities vying for government funding, not to mention private land holders.” John wanted to reach into the phone and pull Sugarman’s layrnx out. “But I can’t give you the exact number.”

  “You said Saluki was perfect, that looking at others was a mere formality. Or do you tell that to all the beauty contestants?”

  “Look, Veranda. The site is under serious consideration and that’s all I can tell you. You do your damage control there, and I’ll do my job here. Okay?”

  “You better-”

  “I’ll be in touch, Veranda,” Sugarman responded and hung up.

  John held his phone out and looked at it as if it was an alien object. “Yeah? And fuck you, too, Dave.”

  28

  April, 1973

  Elias had finally let Father Moody convince him. “You should be with your father in his final moments,” Moody had said. “The chance to see him one last time must take precedence over your job and family obligations. It’s your duty.” Elias had balked, remembering his father’s parting warning to never return directly to Syria, but Moody worked on him until Elias agreed. Besides, he would only be gone a few weeks.

  He wasn’t concerned about leaving Paula. They had reached a boiling point. Maybe time apart would help. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” one of his fellow drivers had told him. He didn’t know if that was true, but he knew he wouldn’t miss his wife. He would miss his daughter, though, and he didn’t want to leave Cheryl Halia behind.

  Elias strived to do for his daughter what his father had done for him. Take extra time whenever possible to teach her what they would not cover in a classroom. Even though Elias had been sickly, his father took him to the ancient souk to learn to haggle and negotiate like a seasoned trader. A practical education is as important as a formal one, he had said, many times. With his flexible work hours, Elias could do this for Cheryl Halia, too. They could spend as much time as they wanted on subjects schools dismissed, like music and art.

  Paula disagreed. “Cheryl needs to play softball and soccer, join Girl Scouts, learn archery. She needs to be tough to make it in the world. It won’t ever be easy for her as an Arab Polak.”

  He’d tried to reason with his wife that music and art and learning to make the family dishes from his homeland were also part of Cheryl Halia’s education. But they couldn’t seem to agree on much of anything. Things got worse when Father Moody told him that Elias’s father’s wool trading business had shrunk to nothing after the government nationalized the wool trade. It was part of the new Syrian-Egyptian alignment and their attempt to lead a pan-Arab unity movement, and it had affected the entire Haddad family. Moody had encouraged Elias to send what funds he could back to the family, and had even personally arranged to transfer the funds.

  Paula was incensed that what little money Elias made driving the taxi had to be shared with people she’d never met from a country she had no intention of ever visiting, and she constantly urged him to look for another, better job to make up the difference. But he was content to drive his cab and spend all his extra time with his daughter. He knew Paula was disappointed in him. She never said it, but she showed it every day. And he knew she was justified. Without his father’s constant pushing, or the admiration of the women in the home when he fixed things and helped in the kitchen, his ambition dwindled. His dreams of going to college evaporated as his preocupation with being the best father he could be grew. And for his part, he had trouble understanding why a woman would want to be a police officer. He had not-so-secretly hoped Paula would quit after the baby was born. It was such a dangerous job for a mother, especially in an American city like Chicago. Why was raising a family not enough?

  Still, they did not talk about his complacency, because he didn’t understand it himself. They did not talk about her ambitions as a professional woman, either. Neither of them knew how to talk about such things.

  Father Moody’s disappointment with him was clear, too. He kept asking questions about community, religious, and political activities in the Old City neighborhood where Elias grew up, but Elias rarely had any good answers. What his father and other family members did after work hours and when they weren’t at family gatherings, Elias never knew.

  Early in their marriage, Elias longed to introduce Paula to his family in Syria. But the situation with Paula becoming pregnant before they had even discussed marriage would have been an embarrassment. He didn’t even have wedding photos to show them. He had been reluctant to tell them anything until many months after the marriage was consummated and Cheryl Halia had been born. During rare phone calls they didn’t have the money for, and letter after letter, he reconstructed his life in America so it fit with his culture back home.

  Now, his father’s illness was terminal. Elias couldn’t postpone the trip any longer. No more procrastination. To save time, Moody insisted he fly directly to Damascus. Time was of the essence. He would lose a day if he had to fly into Beirut. And besides, Moody stressed, no one could meet him in Lebanon because everyone was with his father.

  So after making sure he could return to his taxi job, Elias relied on Father Moody to arrange his outbound flight, and they decided to keep the return flight open so he could stay as long as needed. Only when Elias arrived at O’Hare airport in Father Moody’s Lincoln Town Car, did he seriously begin to contemplate his trip, and what it might mean. He had a habit of not thinking about things until he absolutely had to. If his father was truly on his deathbed, perhaps he’d reveal the details of why Elias was sent away in the first place. He still resented it bitterly. He still didn’t believe it had anything to do with what his oldest brother once revealed inadvertently—his brother was always telling tall tales, after all—that their father was a leader in the resistance against the Syrian regime. That just couldn’t be true. So Elias vowed to seek the truth when he got home. His father owed him that much.

  Already he missed Cheryl Halia, and he had only been gone a few hours. She was his anchor in America, in life, more so with every burst of argument followed by the long, debilitating silences between Paula and him
self. A terrifying thought grabbed hold of him as he boarded the plane. What if Paula and Cheryl Halia were gone when he returned? What if Paula were to divorce him and take custody of their daughter?

  No, he reassured himself. Things were not good between them, but Paula would never sink so low.

  He settled into his seat and wished his daughter was with him. She would love to see the throngs of people arriving and departing from different places in the world. She’d love to eat at an airport restaurant, try something new. They’d both cherish the time to read to one another, and then talk about what they’d read, and then fall asleep, with her curled up against him. And when they arrived in Aleppo, every member of his family, including aunts and uncles, nieces, nephews, sisters-in-law, and cousins would be waiting for her, whistling and ululating in celebration, in unison, to welcome his daughter home.

  He sighed and stared out the window. Her first visit would have to wait for another time.

  Elias transferred planes in Frankfurt, Germany, arriving with the first hours of daylight. He rubbed his eyes, but the feeling of the pins he felt lodged in them didn’t go away, the same way his eyes felt when he worked sixteen-hour days. He was startled at the sight of armed guards standing in wait as the plane taxied to its gate. Why would the German army meet a commercial airline?

  He felt unsettled and out of sorts during his layover. He was exhausted, even though all he had done for twelve hours was sit and wait. And now, he was starving. His bowels felt funny, too. Everything inside was not quite right. He needed to eat something. That’s when he realized he didn’t know any German to order some food. He couldn’t even work up the nerve to order a coffee at a small kiosk. Maybe he could point, or use English? Surely someone knew English. He had no German currency. And because he’d never been out of America since his father sent him away, he had no experience in changing money.

  With nothing else to do but wait, Elias thought of his daughter. What would she be doing now? Eating breakfast, perhaps homemade yogurt, fresh fruit, freshly baked bread, jam, scrambled eggs with allspice, eggs her mother would say looked like someone puked them up. Elias laughed. It was true. Allspice and fresh garlic turned scrambled eggs green. Like Green Eggs and Ham, Cheryl Halia would say as she wolfed them down. No, it was too early yet for her to be awake and out of bed. There was a seven-hour time difference.

  His thoughts turned to his father. He didn’t even know what disease he had. Was it cancer? His heart? Old age? Elias had no idea.

  Very few of the travelers disembarking with Elias at the Damascus Airport late in the afternoon were European or American. Only a handful of travelers were around at all, nothing like O’Hare or even Frankfurt so early in the morning. If O’Hare had seemed chaotic and festive, Frankfurt streamlined and efficient, Damascus was dour and foreboding, poorly lit, colored in tan to match the sandy ground outside. Here, no brightly lit shops beckoned for your money. No currency exchange locations had vendors waiting to help. He wondered where he would meet his family. On this point, he had been given no instructions by Father Moody. Even so, Elias assumed a family member would meet him. There were plenty of cousins in Damascus.

  But what if no family member was able to meet him? What if there was a mix-up in the rendezvous arrangements? He realized now he should have been more careful about the details. Anxiety kicked in, replacing the excitement and novelty he felt about being on an airplane for only the second time in his life. At least he could speak the language.

  He flipped open his wallet to count his cash. Seeing the last school photo of his daughter behind the clear plastic caused him to sigh with relief, as if Cheryl Halia had materialized in front of him.

  At the first official checkpoint, Elias was handed a piece of paper with a seal, a signature, and a date stamped onto it with a mechanical rubber stamp. He folded it and stuffed it into his passport, and then shoving the booklet back into his pocket, thinking about how much he would welcome a shower. How much he would welcome returning to his old room, sitting in the family courtyard with his cousins, even going to the souk to buy Cheryl Halia some gifts from his homeland. Maybe he would buy her some pretty scarves or even gold earrings. Paula hadn’t let her get her ears pierced yet, but maybe if he brought earrings back for both of them, she would give her permission.

  Elias thought he smelled food, but looked around and saw no kiosk or restaurant. There was one soldier sitting in a chair, eating his meal, observing the line of disembarked passengers. Suddenly Elias was ravenous, and the aroma of the soldier’s food brought back everything he’d left behind. The comfort of the complex spices had not been dispelled by ten years of absence. He was certain his aunts and cousins would be preparing mounds of food for his arrival, with all the fresh, natural ingredients difficult to find in Joliet.

  Moving along slowly through customs, Elias’s impatience grew. He paced and fidgeted waiting to get past the customs and passport agents at the next checkpoint. His hunger was all consuming now, but he remembered the coins jangling in his pocket were American. Thankfully, the line was now moving briskly.

  He stepped toward the officials and smiled. This would be his first opportunity to speak his native language, other than the words he taught to Cheryl Halia. Even his conversations with Father Moody had been in English because, for some reason, Moody wanted nothing to do with his mother tongue.

  Elias still carried his Syrian passport, even though he also had a American green card, courtesy of Father Moody. After all these years, he still hadn’t yet bothered to apply for his full American citizenship. Cheryl Halia had said she’d help him study for his citizenship test, but Moody said there’d always be time for that later.

  The Immigration Control Agent leaned forward from his desk as Elias approached. Another soldier sat in a chair behind him, the front legs of the chair poised at a sharp angle. He was tempting fate balancing on the back legs in such a way. Both looked bored and unconcerned, their expressions hollow. The agent opened Elias’s passport, looked up at him to make sure the photo matched the person, and smiled. Then he looked at the paper that he was given when he entered the airport.

  “Marhaba,” he said and handed Elias his passport. Then as if confused, he withdrew it before Elias could grasp it. The potential gravity of the moment eluded Elias. The official furrowed his brow as he re-opened the passport and looked at it again. As if on cue, the second soldier’s chair fell forward, the metal taps at the bottom of the front legs landing with a snap on the floor. The agent puzzled over the piece of paper. He looked up at Elias, pointing at the date stamped crookedly on a line.

  “The date, it is wrong.”

  “It was stamped back there,” Elias said in Arabic, pointing behind him.

  The agent turned and shoved the piece of paper to the soldier behind him. He had a puzzled look on his face, shrugged his shoulders, and extended his arms, turning his wrists, as if to say, What can you do?

  “I cannot admit you into the country if this piece of paper does not show today’s date.”

  The soldier and the agent conferred for a few seconds. The agent spoke.

  “Where do you live?”

  “My family lives in Aleppo.”

  “Do you live in Aleppo?”

  “No, I am residing in Chicago, USA.”

  Elias felt his stomach rumble loudly. He was certain the pair detaining him had heard it as well. As if as an exclamation point to Elias’s hunger, the soldier belched, momentarily dousing Elias’s appetite with the stench.

  “Aleppo?” The agent and the soldier again looked at each other. Any hint of a welcome drained from their faces.

  “But you are Syrian citizen, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were born in Syria?”

  “Yes.”

  The soldier directed the agent to talk to the person at the other checkpoint to see about the date, motioned for Elias to come out of the line, and wait in a small room with a gray metal desk and two chairs. The agent returned and said t
o the soldier that the agent at the other checkpoint had been relieved of his post for the day. He checked the date. His rubber stamp was found to be correct.

  The agent came to the room where Elias sat, nervously.

  “I am very sorry, but you must remain here at the airport until the matter of the incorrect date can be resolved.”

  “Can’t you simply stamp the document with the correct date yourself?”

  “That is not my job. And it would look highly irregular for the paper to have one date crossed out and another stamped in.”

  Elias groaned visibly and threw up his arms. His stomach churned, begging for sustenance. He hadn’t had a shower in over twenty four hours. The pins in his eyes became nails. If the setting was incorrect because the dial had slipped, he reasoned, why weren’t others detained for the same cause? He was the only one who had been pulled out of line.

  “But you can check the airplane, talk to the stewardess? They will show you I just arrived. Not twenty minutes ago.”

  The agent looked at him, as if to say, it’s in God’s hands now.

  Another day in paradise, Elias thought, wryly. He had no reason to believe this small matter couldn’t be resolved quickly.

  29

  August, 2010

  The gavel came down and Blake Andrews called to order the special Saluki Town Council public hearing on the proposed Federal Detention and Rehabilitation Center. From the moment she walked into the auditorium, Holly sensed order would be in short supply. Murmurs and whispers taking place among neighbors, friends, acquaintances, and old classmates had the latent energy of raised pitchforks.

  Kathy Veranda walked in escorting her elderly parents. As she ushered them to seats in the back row, Holly felt the heat rise in her cheeks. The reality of the flirtation between her and John had been eating away at her. Seeing his wife and in-laws turned momentary lapses of judgment into the guilt-ridden beginning of a full-fledged affair. She turned her attention back to the meeting.